1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a data transferring method, and an object tracking system using the same. More particularly, this invention relates to a data transferring method for efficiently transferring data from a server to a plurality of clients connected to the server, and an object tracking system capable of tracking the locations of a plurality of objects by acquiring, transferring and processing data concerning the location information.
2. Related Art
Object tracking technology is now widely applied in industries and to people's lives. An example of the circumstances for applying the technology is the mining industry where mine workers normally carry out the mining operation underground. In the event that a catastrophic event happens without any precaution, it is imperative to track and locate the trapped workers precisely and promptly. Whether rescue efforts can be implemented successfully depends greatly on the time it takes to acquire, transfer and process the location information of the trapped workers. Thus, it is imperative to have advanced systems, which are capable of providing highly accurate location information with little deviations in the shortest time when a catastrophic event happens.
In an object tracking system utilizing Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, the data of the location information of objects is initially acquired by an RFID reader and subsequently accessed by a server. The server functions to process the data and further transfers the processed data to a plurality of clients or terminals, which monitor and track the location of the objects based on further processing of the data, if necessary.
In circumstances where there are a large amount of objects to be monitored and tracked, a large quantity of realtime data concerning the location of the objects must be transferred from the server to the clients within a short time. For example, 2,000 mine workers are monitored by the tracking system, as the monitor terminals of the system need to display the latest location information as soon as possible, the server must send the data consisting of location information of all the workers to each client within a time interval defined by the refresh time of the system, for example, 3 seconds. Therefore, in order to realize a realtime or semi-realtime monitoring of the objects, the data transferring speed between the server and the clients becomes critical to the overall object tracking system.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved data transferring method to implement efficient transmission of a large quantity of data from a server to a plurality of clients in a realtime or semi-realtime manner.